Serbia v Switzerland Betting Tips & Preview

Serbia top the group and will prove to be a very hard team to break down.

Football Form Labs

|

Tue, 19 Jun, 8:02 PM

Serbia v Switzerland – Saturday 4am, OptusSport

Both teams will be looking to put a marker down on this group with this encounter likely to be the decider for a qualification spot. Switzerland held the tournament favourites Brazil to a draw in their World Cup opener with an impressive defensive display as they only conceded once to a wonder strike from Phillipe Coutinho.

Serbia meanwhile, put in an impressive display to record the only victory in this group thus far against Costa Rica, which should fill them with confidence for this crucial match. That said, both teams lacked a cutting edge in the final third, priding themselves on their defensive work which could be the story of this clash. The Serbs have had fewer than three strikes in eight of their last nine matches against teams we rank in the top 40, while Switzerland have seen this in each of their last five major tournament matches.

Vladimir Petkovic’s men have only lost one of their 18 matches since the Euros, conceding just nine times across these. However, excluding minnows (teams outside our top 50 ranked sides), they’re W4-D6-L1 in this period and at major tournaments their last four matches have finished all-square. They only managed to get two shots on target against Brazil, while Serbia managed just three in their game making this look set to be a low scoring tight match.

In fact, although Serbia are just W1-D2-L7 over their last 10 against our top 20 ranked sides, none of the defeats were by more than one goal and the Swiss attack is weaker than many of the previous opposition, so the Serbs should have enough about them to share the spoils..

The two aforementioned draws for Serbia with top 20 opposition both finished 1-1, while Switzerland have had this same result in two of their last three matches and given the likely defensive nature of this game, we’ll take a punt on this scoreline.